Sports science has its place

Date: February 10 2013

Tim Lane

ANDREW Demetriou said on Thursday: ''Today is the day we draw a line in the sand.'' The AFL boss was speaking for the collective of Australian sporting codes in declaring war on performance-enhancing drugs and other corruption.

The words sounded real and I'm sure were spoken with genuine intent. Yet when it comes to administrators and the war against drug cheating, the track record is not great. The chieftains talk a good game but rarely play four quarters. Not so long ago, the AFL referred to its regime as the ''gold standard''.

This might explain the tone of Caroline Wilson's column in Saturday's Age (''Anti-doping agencies have dropped the ball''). The message between the lines seemed to be that the AFL has lost confidence in the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority and would like to be responsible for its own drug testing.

One can but hope this is not a seriously entertained prospect. Apart from the not insignificant matter of World Anti-Doping Agency compliance, the time can't be far away when administrations that fail to demonstrate independent and transparent process will lose the faith of their constituencies. And for all the things it is, one thing the AFL clearly is not is an exemplar of transparent process.

Examples? Try the recent decision to award priority draft picks according to a secret formula; hark back to last week's discussion about the illicit drug code; then have a think about the basic matter of the season's fixture. Too often we are effectively told: ''Trust us, we're from the AFL.''

Independent drug-testing agencies, however fallible their track records, must remain precisely that: independent. Sport would be on its way to hell in a hand basket were this to change.

Any imagining to the contrary would not be the AFL's first moment of irrationality since Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare delivered the Australian Crime Commission's report into sport last Thursday.

Andrew Demetriou's long-held antagonism towards modern sports science at AFL clubs had no doubt been on a slow burn towards thermonuclear combustion as the Essendon scandal developed. The subsequent content of the ACC report would have provided more than enough validation for his button to be pushed.

The AFL boss' denunciation of the use of science, in a Friday-morning interview with Fairfax radio's Neil Mitchell, was unequivocal. Demetriou (pictured) is levelling much of the blame for what happened at Essendon on sports science and those who practice it. He declared the days of clubs seeking competitive advantage through science to be over.

This, it must be said, represents an amusing paradox, bearing in mind his football department's slavish reliance on scientific measures for virtually every judgment it has made over the past five years. More than that, though, it is a shallow assessment that suggests a lack of understanding of the proper application of science to elite sport in Australia. Over three decades, sports scientists at various Australian centres of excellence have made a brilliant contribution to much of our Olympic and other international success.

The irony is that from the early 1980s, we set about employing ''clean'' science as a counter to what we suspected was the drug-fuelled advantage of many opponents.

For the AFL boss to imply that any use of scientific techniques in the preparation of footballers is unhealthy or potentially corrupt does a major disservice to many high-level contributors to Australian elite sport.

Notwithstanding the questionable methods of Essendon's fitness gurus, if any group should be bundled together and set aside for damning criticism over the Essendon affair, it is not sports scientists. It is a much more specific group: one with names and faces. It is the club's administrative and football managers. And to that should be added the senior players who failed to recognise the danger of what was upon them as they were taken away from the club for treatment outside the norm.

The Essendon story was followed almost immediately by the ACC report. Whether the proximity of each to the other was genuine coincidence, or not, we don't know. And this is not the only question about process to which Thursday's shock release gives rise. Where did this glossily packaged document suddenly spring from and what drove it? Will it actually deliver the villains it insists are out there? What were its true motives?

A legal mate has pointed me to section 59AD of the Australian Crime Commission Act 2002, which states: ''A report under this act that: (a) sets out a finding that an offence has been committed; or (b) makes a recommendation to institute a prosecution in respect to an offence; must not be made available to the public unless the finding or recommendation is expressed to be based on evidence that would be admissible in the prosecution of a person for that offence.''

My mate says he can't see the evidence in the report which, under the act, is required for it to be made public. He is not the only person scratching his head over the vagueness beyond the attention-grabbing headlines.

Anyway, as we watch and wait, a line has been drawn in the sand. Many shady types, and quite a few genuine sports scientists, have been placed on the wrong side of it.

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